Brief update: on vacation. Xmas was arduous. Pup is doing fine; lump is a benign lipoma. Possible new job is up in the air, as the hiring manager is on vacation until the 4th. Looking forward to NYE party. That is all.

DoubleTap Ammo is now listing three brand-spankin’-new loadings for the .38 Super +P (note that there’s no non-plus-P .38 Super; the +P in this case is just meant to differentiate the round from the dimensionally identical but much lower pressure .38 ACP).

There’s a 115-grain Barnes TAC-XP listed at 1425 FPS, an unnamed bonded 125-grain JHP at 1350, and a 147-grain flat point FMJ at 1225, all from a 5″ 1911. I’m betting the Barnes TAC-XP load will be impressive; Barnes has a long history of making tough bullets that only get better the faster they’re pushed.

Speaking of pushing, this pushes me ever closer to the edge of buying a .38 Super. I also just noticed that CDNN has stainless 1911 Metalform mags in .38 super for only $17 a pop…

As you’ve probably already seen over at Breda’s place, my girlfriend and I drove down to Cleveland for a little visit this weekend. Carrie fired her first-ever shots under Breda’s tutelage, starting with .22s and working up to .38 Special, 9mm, .357 Magnum, and .45 ACP. She especially liked my custom CZ 85 Combat and Mike’s Smith & Wesson Model 19.

I was a little reluctant to teach Carrie myself, for the same reasons Kathy Jackson cited in her article on men teaching their wives and girlfriends. Fortunately Breda volunteered to step in and did a fine job of instructing, while Carrie proved a quick study. I did a bit of practicing myself, but spent most of my time watching the ladies and keeping magazines loaded for them.

Between all the shooting and the wonderful company and the great food, we had a damn fine weekend.

This past week I’ve been, as the old curse says, living in interesting times. I’m awaiting biopsy results for a lump in my dog’s hind leg, which could just be a fatty tumor, but could also be something much worse. Hopefully I’ll find out today or tomorrow.

On the bright side, I have a decent shot at a job that would get me out of Contract Hell, and it’d be a damn MIRACLE to land a full-time job with benefits, in Michigan, in the worst economy in 70 years. Fingers are firmly crossed.

And just to throw some gun-related content in there, my Christmas present to myself this year is a couple hundred rounds of Wolf 7.62×39. Got a great deal on it, though I won’t have an opportunity to burn any up until spring.

This week can fuck off and die.

Ever since I was a little kid reading Capstick’s safari hunting books, I’ve been intrigued by biltong. And for a lotta years I’ve entertained the idea of making my own. It often takes me an absurdly long time to get around to doing things, and biltong was no exception. But I finally did it… I think.

See, I decided to make biltong without ever having eaten the stuff, so I can’t confidently declare that what I made is True Biltong. Still, it’s tasty stuff, and making it was fun.

Poking around the web for instructions/recipes, I quickly discovered that almost everyone agrees on using London broil, salt, black pepper, coriander, and apple cider vinegar. Some recipes call for brown sugar, others not so much. If the ingredients are consistent, the method varies considerably. After reading just enough recipes to thoroughly confuse myself (the man with one recipe knows exactly how to make something, the man with two is never quite sure…), I dove in.

The London broil was sliced into strips about a half-inch wide, then heavily salted on both sides with Kosher salt. The recipes called for rock salt, which I didn’t have on hand, but the substitution seems to have done no harm.

After about an hour, the strips got a dunk in apple cider vinegar, both to marinate the meat and rinse off any excess salt. I let the vinegar drip off, then rubbed on a healthy covering of ground black pepper, coriander, and (hey, why not?) a little paprika. Into a zip-lock baggie and into the fridge overnight.

The “proper” way to dry cure the meat involves hanging it in a box with some ventilation holes and a lightbulb to help drive out the moisture. This is not going to work in a house with two very resourceful little carnivores prowling around. It also takes WAY too long for me. Funny how I can wait years to actually try something, but can’t be arsed to give it two weeks of drying time, no?

Instead I laid out all the strips on a baking sheet and dropped it into an oven set for 150 degrees. It took, oh, maybe 8 hours in my not-at-all consistent oven, flipping the meat and rotating the baking sheet periodically. The result came out looking like this:

How is it? Well, it’s nomulent stuff, spicy and nicely chewy. It LOOKS like the pictures of real biltong I’ve Googled up. I’m not at all qualified to pass judgment on its authenticity, but I like it well enough that I’m going to mail-order some real biltong for comparison purposes. Maybe I should send a sample to pdb to get an expert’s opinion…

As I continue to kick around the .38 Super idea, I’m halfway tempted to do a Gunsite Service Pistol-type build on a plain base gun (Yes, I know full well that Cooper would not have approved of a GSP in .38 Super, though he actually carried a Super when he worked in Central America).

The original GSPs were straightforward guns with only the modifications Cooper considered really important: sights, trigger, dehorn job. I’d probably start with a basic stainless Colt .38 Super and follow the original plan pretty faithfully, using parts mostly from Evolution Gun Works:

• Trigger job with an EGW hard sear and disconnector. The only MIM parts in current Colts are the sear and disconnector. If the gun’s getting a trigger job anyways, I’d just as soon replace those parts with high-quality machined components. The factory hammers are made from barstock and should hold up just fine.
• Extended single-sided thumb safety. EGW apparently makes the only barstock safety on the market. It seems everyone else, even the big-name premium brands, uses castings or MIM.
• Angle-bored bushing, again from EGW. I’ve been hearing great things about these bushings for years now; I really ought to try one.
• EGW oversized firing pin stop, fitted tightly. These also come with a square bottom, which can be radiused as the user sees fit. A small radius lowers the contact point with the hammer, which slows down slide opening. This might be helpful with the high-pressure .38 Super.
• Trijicon fixed night sights. My favorite pistol sights, made here in Michigan.

Dehorn the tangs and grip safety, give all the external surfaces a light beadblasting, maybe slap on some nice micarta grips, and I’d have a slick little pseudo-GSP.

Hmm, I wonder what I should sell to finance the project…